Are You Loathsome Tonight? Read Online Free PDF Page B

Matty's New York apartment and laying down tracks every day. When it was done, everyone wanted to take him out on the town, throw him a party, get him laid, show him the time of his life. Everyone was astounded that he had a life. The world was giddy with the news of Terry Cobb's resurrection from the dead and his posthumous collaboration with Matty. It was as good as a new Kydds’ album. It was rock and roll history.
    â€œYou gonna spend some time in the city?” the soundman asked him on his last night in the studio. He'd come in to do some last-minute tweaking on a couple of tracks, perfectionist shit, the kind of stuff he'd never bothered with in the past because Matty always took care of it.
    â€œNo,” Cobb answered. “Got to get back out to my house in the country. Lots more writing to do."
    â€œMan, you're on fire, huh? Bein’ dead for a while must really get the old creative juices flowing."
    Cobb gave the man a sharp look. Then he took a step backward, throwing his eyes into shadow. When he smiled, his gaunt face took on a skullish look that made the soundman shudder.
    â€œIt's like having a whole new life,” Cobb said.

Saved

    Poppy and I met in a boy-brothel in Thailand in 1936. We found we had a lot in common and decided to take over the world. Poppy and I are very different in the way we use language and construct stories, but our writing styles turned out to be weirdly complementary. We could see around each other's corners.
    â€”Christa Faust

    Christa and I wrote this story for Young Blood , an anthology of horror writers under thirty edited by the late Mike Baker. I guess it's our “minor” collaboration, the novella “Triads” in Doug Winter's Revelations being our “major” one. A bicoastal dominatrix, expert swing dancer, and Mexican wrestling valet, Christa has since published the ultraviolent-erotic debut novel Control Freak (Masquerade Books).

Saved

    by Poppy Z. Brite and Christa Faust

    â€œYou see,” Billy told the hooker, “I've always wanted..."
    Words failed him. He reached into his flight bag and laid the Luger on the scarred Formica tabletop. The pistol was inert as the brittle drift of dead insects in the corner of the room—but this was an insect of machined steel and chitinous blue-black sheen, ready to click to life at his touch. And its sting...
    Its sting could rule the world.
    â€œI want...” he managed to say again, but his voice was a wraith, a dying ghost.
    The girl raised bruise-colored eyes to meet his. Ever so slowly, she nodded. And ever so sadly, she smiled.

    ***

    The Luger was a family heirloom, a keepsake from his grandfather's war, an artifact from Billy's own claustrophobic Georgia childhood. It was a semi-automatic pistol with a six-inch sighted barrel and a checkered grip of heavy rubber, nearly three pounds of sleek steel filled with little silver-jacketed bullets like seeds in a deadly fruit. Granddad took it down once a week to clean and oil, not minding Billy's solemn five-year-old face hovering beside the armchair, Billy's wide eyes following every move of Granddad's gnarled fingers as they performed the intricate ritual dance of ramrod and soft cloth, thick unguent that smelled of metal and mysterious manhood.
    â€œYou see this?” Granddad had asked him once, cradling the pistol in both giant blue-veined hands. Even at five, Billy knew it was a dumb question: the gun was right in front of his face, wasn't it? If it had been Momma asking, he would have told her so, and watched her mouth prim up with the dislike she always tried to hide. He had his father's logical mind, she said, and hippiegirl Momma didn't believe in logic. Or guns, for that matter. But Billy loved his grandfather, so he just nodded.
    â€œYou don't touch this,” Granddad told him. “Leastways not till you're grown. Then it's yours ."
    Six months later Granddad was dead of an embolism, a fat gobstopper of